Why ‘Castle’ Made Me Believe in TV Again

If dreams came true, I would become Richard Castle, the bestselling mystery novel writer. The trouble is, Castle is not real. He is the title character of the ABC-TV program.

I cannot become Castle, but I am thinking of pursuing an alternate route that would bring me closer to him: writing a television script for the hour-long dramedy (drama/comedy). If I pull it off, that new direction for my four-decade freelance writing career would also reflect a new direction for my relationship with television watching.

You see, I used to qualify as a “tv snob,” feeling superior to those who spent their evenings in front of the “boob tube.” Such lowbrow stuff, I would think. Why aren’t those tens of millions of couch potatoes reading books or attending theater instead, to improve their minds instead of killing their brain cells?

My shift to prime-time television viewer derived from an unexpected, and even noble, development. As a freelance writer, I became more and more involved in researching the criminal justice system, especially the flaws that cause wrongful convictions. I began watching television dramas such as “Law & Order” to understand what the masses were learning about the criminal justice system from a mass medium often accused of spreading unreality.

What I viewed frequently surprised me, pleasantly. The “Law & Order” franchise often portrayed the criminal justice system—police, prosecutors, defense lawyers, courts—realistically, managing to be entertaining and didactic simultaneously. I began to sample other dramas, to see how they were educating/mis-educating mass audiences, and to figure out what I could learn about quality writing from them.

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